Posted on 12/06/2004 12:58:46 PM PST by Pyro7480
I'd prefer it if the entire section were axed and totally seperate legislation that DEALS with immigration reform and NOTHING BUT written.
This thread would turn into a 6,000 reply flame war perpetrated mostly by these posters who's screenames I've never heard before, but it would be sounder policy.
I have a better idea. You show me where Bush has done anything to retard the importation of Islam into our homeland.
No argument here.
But I think we got a better shot at getting Congress to pass out free ice cream bars on the Capital steps wearing paisley Muumuus then that happening.
Cop-out--that is a dem trick, when asked a question you don't want to answer, you turn it back on me to answer a question that I didn't posit to begin with.
Not gonna work....
Mr. LIEBERMAN. In the meantime, Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to say a word about amendment No. 3807 which Senator McCain and I offered yesterday. This is another of the elements of the Ð9/11 Commission report that was part of legislation Senator McCain and I introduced the day after Labor Day as a way to guarantee that all elements of the 9/11 report would be before the Senate.
This one has to do with effective screening to keep terrorists out of America and away from vital infrastructure in America. It is a comment on the age in which we live, something we have taken for granted in America but has been a great asset of ours, and that is the size of our country, the size of our borders, and the welcome mat we generally have put out for people visiting our country.
That openness has been exploited--it certainly was prior to the attacks of September 11--exploited by those who, as someone else has said, hate us more than they love their own lives. They come in here and are prepared to blow themselves up to kill Americans. That demands that we not try to put a wall around America--we can never do that--but that we be aggressive and smart about raising our guard and requiring some standards of personal identification from people coming into America, something we have not required before.
We can do that without compromising unduly, unnecessarily, the openness of our country and the welcome we put out to both those who want to emigrate here and those who just plain want to visit.
The amendment Senator McCain and I offered has several parts to it. One is to simply help us obtain better information about the way in which terrorists move around, the way in which they intend to exploit our transportation systems, our existing laws, to do damage to us and our people. We want to better screen for terrorists in foreign countries long before they can reach our borders. We want to better train border personnel. We want to use the most sophisticated computer imaging equipment to detect fraudulent travel documents. We want to better screen at the borders and at points of access, as I say, to critical infrastructure, transportation particularly, and we want to do more to protect against
[Page: S10216] GPO's PDF
What it means to defend America has changed. In a different age, the age of serious conflict, it meant having the strongest military we could, having the most sophisticated weapons we could, to deter enemy attack, to be prepared to go to the battlefield, to deploy our forces to meet the enemy and defeat the enemy. Today, it involves homeland security in a way it never has before in our history, and this amendment would enable us to raise our homeland security in the best way possible.
In its analysis of the events leading up to September 11, 2001, the 9/11 Commission concluded that the terrorists are as reliant on travel documents as they ultimately are on weapons. To succeed, they have to travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, look at targets, and gain access to sites they want to attack. They rely on networks of people to facilitate their travel, people they place within this country. Commonly, their travel documents have been tampered with.
The 9/11 Commission found that as many as 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers could have been intercepted at the borders. Two of them actually entered the United States even though they were known as terrorists by at least one agency in the intelligence community of the United States. They were on a terrorist watch list. They had been heard at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, kind of a world conference of terrorists, al-Qaida largely, where we now believe the attacks of 9/11 were planned. Two of them met that standard.
The point is we have to address the multiple opportunities to identify and stop the terrorists at every point along their travel routes long before they reach our entry points, at our border crossings. Once inside the country, we have to find ways to detect them.
The first thing this amendment does is seek to improve our intelligence about how terrorists travel. Before 9/11 and even today, there is no agency within the Federal Government that has the responsibility to consider this question. The Department of Homeland Security, therefore, would be directed by the amendment to work with the appropriate intelligence and law enforcement agencies in a coordinated effort to detect methods and patterns of travel, such as the use of specific routes. They would look for those who assist terrorists, be they human smugglers or
corrupt government officials.
There is information--and I can describe it because it was mentioned in a newspaper; I saw it in the Washington Times earlier this week--about terrorist elements, al-Qaida working with certain gangs, drug groups, who customarily smuggle people across our southern border to work with them to smuggle in terrorists. We cannot sit back and let that happen.
This amendment would also expand screening for terrorists long before they reach our borders. Federal agencies would be required to develop a plan for working with foreign countries to share information on terrorists and increase inspection at foreign airports, not just U.S. airports. The amendment would increase investment in new technologies that can detect false travel documents or those with certain indicators that are consistent with terrorist use based on patterns of what we know now, and would require both the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to provide training about terrorist travel to our front-line border officials so they may better spot forged passports or other subtle clues that warrant further scrutiny.
The best available technology should also be provided to our embassies and consulates to detect doctored passports or other forms of false identification before the applicant is issued a visa, set up a kind of technological wall of identification, most specifically at visa-granting points around the world for visas to come to the United States. To improve screening at our borders, the 9/11 Commission recognized the need for a robust entry and exit system based on the use of biometric information. A system of this sort has been under development for over a year now, but it needs to be improved and accelerated. Our amendment requires the Department of Homeland Security to do just that.
The 9/11 Commission also recommended that we close the gaping hole in our border security created by policies allowing easy passage into the United States from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean; logical enough in years past, the natural neighborly tendency of the United States of America and Americans generally, but unfortunately it is a policy of openness that has been exploited and continues to be exploited by the terrorists.
Our lenient border policies with our neighbors to the north and south today constitute a vulnerability. Travelers may now cross these borders with no other proof of U.S. citizenship than a verbal statement. Individuals claiming to be Canadians enter our country from Canada without showing a passport. The policies are evidence of our good relations with our neighbors, but in the age of terrorism, that friendship must allow for better security for the benefit of both.
Our amendment would require biometric passports, or an identification document just as secure, for everyone crossing into the United States, even U.S. citizens and our closest neighbors.
As we make our borders more secure, we must not forsake the principles of openness and freedom that define us as a nation. This amendment therefore requires that the Department of Homeland Security consolidate and improve a registered travel program that allows previously screened and trusted travelers to go quickly across our borders so that officials may focus on those who might do us harm.
Finally, this amendment improves the way we issue key identification documents, such as driver's licenses , birth certificates, or personal identification cards that may be required before boarding a commercial airliner or requested by a law enforcement officer who has grounds to be suspicious. It would require minimum security standards for these documents and directs the Federal Government to work with the States to establish minimum standards for both the security features embedded in these documents and for the way in which the documents are issued.
By the way, a similar program is already in effect for issuing commercial driver's licenses . In this regard, I want to thank my cosponsor on this amendment, Senator McCain, and the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, for their long work together in the interest of establishing not a national identity card but minimum uniform standards for personal identification documents in the United States of America.
We have no intention of usurping the State's role here, their capacity to design their own identification documents. The amendment specifies that the States retain the full authority to decide who qualifies, for example, for a driver's license. We would, in addition, provide grants to the States to help them implement these new standards.
For several decades, study after study has told us how easy it is to obtain a false identity in this country. As recently as 2002, GAO investigators used fraudulent identification made by commercially available computer software to obtain driver's licenses in several States. Of course, the driver's license is an entry card to a personal identification and clearance throughout the system.
We have known about this problem for decades, but after September 11 we can't wait any longer--and we are still waiting, since September 11, to do anything about it. This bill will push us forward.
The 9/11 Commission described a variety of loopholes and flaws and inadequacies in our current border security personal identity system. We must close and repair those; close those loopholes, repair those flaws, and put to an end, as best we can, to the terrorists' ability to continually reinvent themselves and escape detection. We are up to this. We are technologically up to this. The question is whether we have the will and the common sense to do so.
This amendment would help our border and law enforcement officials accomplish exactly that. For the sake of the safety of all Americans, I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.
I note with gratitude the presence on the floor of Senator Levin. I yield the floor to him at this time for the purpose of offering an amendment.
[Page: S10217] GPO's PDF
Love the colored type---Purple kinda fits ole Kerry!!!!
That is the only workable strategy.
How we go about this, well that is going to take someone smarter then me to figure out.
It is not rocket science, we all need to get ourselves on the ballot for precinct committeeman, we need to recruit as many other conservatives as possible to run, when we get enough people to control the county party, and elect conservative county chairmen and the majority of delegates to state party elections we then elect conservative state chairmen, and conservative delegates to national conventions.
Always show up at county, and state party elections, most times several of the delegates don't show up, let your county chairman you are there, and want a proxy, many times you can get a proxy to vote in place of a delegate that didn't show up.
Fact#1 Bush proposed an illegal-alien amnesty act.
Fact #2, almost immediately afterwards illegal-alien traffic increased from 60-100 percent above norms. So in a word, Bush "IS" responsible for the current illegal-alien crisis. He cares nothing for our culture or Borders.
Keep in mind this President "Assumed" CFR would be thrown out by the Supremes so he signed it into law. Our children will also be saddled with a 400+ Billion Medicare bill because of Bush's ineptitude. It's really too bad Kerry was the Dem running against him, had the Dems put someone up like Zell Miller, Bush would have lost in a landslide.
But since they did not then Conservatives will be sending some Pro-Illegal idiots packing in 2006.
Pro-Illegal = Anti-American.
Okay, I have a couple of questions---I guess this is a generalized speech about the amendment he is proposing. I find it weird that it is he and MCCAIN. I may be wrong, but I could haved sworn that some posters from Arizona have said that he has worked against Prop. 200 that was passed there. Any poster from Arizona on this thread?
Did you notice that he did mention that this has been a problem for DECADES. That means that Bush didn't actually invent illegal immigration contrary to what some posters would have you believe. If it has been a problem for decades it will take a while and a WILL to fix it.
If Lieberman who is the co-chairman of the the senate committee with Susan Collins, and McCain, (both very powerful Senators) wanted this so badly, why didn't they side with Sensenbrenner. I guarantee if they had, this would not be passed until more work next year!!!
Understand what I mean? Also, I did not read a whole lot about local law enforcement being able to turn illegals in if they are caught doing some other crime. That has been one of the bug-a-boos, not being able to turn illegals in without the ACLU down their throats.
Gosh, life sucks and then you die!!!
Whose word are you taking for all our your statisics. Also, how can you make a blanket statement that Bush doesn't care for our culture or our Borders? That kinda doesn't make sense.
If you are worried about our culture, you might want to look to the teachers in regular schools and colleges. They are the ones into multculturalism. As far a our borders are concerned, who else has ever had even a teeny-tiny plan?
You sound like you need to find the nearest Pat Buchanan website.
A voice of reason! Well spoken. This is just starting, my friend!
Step 1, go to google.com or whichever search engine you use.
Step 2, search for the following words, "Bush Amnesty illegal alien", don't bother adding s'es to the words because the search engines will just drop them anyway.
Step 3, read the hits until the cows come home.
Last count there were 68,000 matches. From sources such as Fox News, WND, Washington Times, USA today and the list goes on and on. Facts are our friends.
Extremely.
It isn't just a matter of spouting facts---most people can find facts to back up a point of view, but you have to look at the whole picture.
First of all, I AM anti-illegal, but that doesn't mean I have to be anti-Bush. Remember, he told everyone before the election that he was for a "guest worker" program. You can read it as amnesty if you want, but if Kerry would have won, it definitely would have been a blanket amnesty because it is that way in the democrat platform.
Since Bush didn't hide this fact, no one here can complain about it, if they voted for him. Right?
Now, in order to get accomplished what we all want, which is strict border control, there is one obstacle that no one has mentioned anywhere on this thread, and I'm not referring to congress or state's rights. I'm talking ACLU. Every time border control or the immigration service tries to deport illegals they are being slapped with lawsuits.
Until, congress or the judiciary will slap the ACLU and the bleeding heart libs that support them, it won't do as much good as we would like to pressure the White House and congress. Therefore, we need a multi-front assault instead of grousing and complaining about what hasn't been done.
We FReepers are made of stronger stuff than that--and I don't like reading posts from people that just want to bitch and not contribute to the cause.
I agree. The cheap labor lobby have their advocates.
It's tough to get people to understand the concept of a political majority. There are about 180 votes in the Congress for serious improvement in immigration policy. Almost all those votes are Republican votes.
We'll have to form a majority coalition on this by getting other Republicans on board.
"Be patient my children, the next congress is ours and the executive branch. We have four more years to fix many things and we will, because we the People are going to press them like there is no tomorrow."
Quit talking sense to the crybabies on the furom. They want to have a tantrum and they are going to have it.
I would calmly suggest that if anyone feels upset about this , use your emotion usefully. Venting here is useless - letting your congress-critter know how you feel is much more important.
Amazing that they just can't stop going nuts...
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